As my interest in classical music grows stronger and stronger I am harder pressed to point to contemporary or modern works that I not only believe to be worthy of note, but also genuinely love. Here's my brief guide to 20th century artists that make my hair stand on end. Though attempt is made at historical analysis/consideration the base for all this is, of course, purely subjective. Enjoy

Cavernous, impressionistic, disturbing and nihilistic, Incantation grasped the ideas and spirit of the original death metal bands yet made music that was entirely their own, using every element available to them as a genuine compositional tool.

Bridging the gap between the worlds of klassichemusik and volksmusik, Vaughan Williams' tales of pastoral idleness and rural awe are all the more emotional and profound in our decaying post-industrial world.

I'm sort of breaking the rules here by including a 21st century band, but they are too good to ignore. This band has shown the places metal can still go with majesty and expertise in craft. The poor commercial decision of placing a swastika on the cover of their greatest achievement may have cost them a career, but I doubt they care.

The only band from the whole neofolk movement to do something beyond simply writing Nazi pop songs. This band's whole career feels like one enormous conceptual undertaking. There is irony and beauty in the fact that so modern and deconstructivist an idea is used as a vehicle to powerfully address the spiritual woes of our era.

Funeral doom had incredible amounts of potential, after black metal fell many of us considered it quite naturally as the next step. Somehow, after its greatest band released its greatest album, it fizzled out, was invaded by people who didn't get it, and died. Said album remains a testament to its glory, which lay primarily in the way it used slowness as a tool for unparalleled ideas in melodic development, in order to evoke a sorrow that was profound because it was impersonal, almost metaphysical.

Hellhammer/Celtic Frost are the band that emancipated metal from its roots in rock and the blues, leading it more than once through the brand new paths it could explore. Free from the communal aesthetic and the context of parties and large venues, Tom G. and co. made metal into a genre that didn't just pretend to be dark and disturbed.

Few artists have ever excelled so much in capturing an atmosphere through a simple motif as is Varg Vikernes. As admirable as his compositional ability is, the "riff" is his true art, a principle he reinterprets and transforms masterfully to create some of the most evocative music to come from a popular context.

Far more of an impressionist than he would care to admit, Britten is proof that the Debussy angle had a lot more to it than met the surface. Violent, confused and disoriented, Britten's music is the testament of a society shaken to its core by a subconscious realization of its impending downfall.

This entry seeks to include Joy Division, but there's a reason why New Order is selected instead. Though Ian Curtis' power and charisma is undeniable, New Order is the proof that the magic of Joy Division was largely the band behind him. Austere and contemplative reinterpretations of pop music, soaked in a melancholic and detached vibe, the tunes this band crafts almost justify all the atrocities popular music had produced before them (and would produce after them, often under their "influence".) Perhaps one of the few sincere artistic evaluations of urban reality.

Though partially to blame for music's democratization, Ravel's magic lay in his capacity to take any element, no matter how base, and craft majestic art with it. A futurist musician if there ever was one.

Atonality and serialism were too final and fatalistic to lead to anything constructive (thus to art music's current state of flux), but Berg somehow managed to craft intense beauty from these elements, quite unlike the cold hostility of his peers.

Schulze adopted modern instruments and the format of the album consciously and understood the potential they entailed. Perhaps no other post-WWII musician has been so adventurous and brilliant. The musicologist Charles Rosen has said in his book "The Classical Style" that truly great composers can be measured by the amount of control they exert over every element of their work, no matter how tiny. If so, then Schulze ranks amongst the greats.

A visionary, a man who truly looked beyond. Ives' famous unanswered question was answered before he made it: Debussy. If his contemporaries had understood the sheer weight of the possibilities his music implied the 20th century may have been very, very different. Historical importance aside his best pieces are beyond this world.